The main object of this invention is the handling of clothes on hangers, and it is more specifically an apparatus able of moving the clothes from one place to another, by example, in a warehouse or workshop following the instructions of a host computer.
The automation of operations in the garment industry follows a slower process than in other industries, because of the deformability of the clothes and suitable for other industries do not fit for handling clothes on hangers. The dimensions, weight, way of fastening of clothes, and the wide scope of size and form of hangers and clothes, state the need for a specific manipulator.
The automation of clothes on hangers warehouses has been developed following two different strategies. One of them deals with the clothes by batches without individual handling and treatment of each cloth, which however, is necessary in all those warehouses in which the order of entry of the clothes is different from the one of exit, as it usually happens. The other strategy is based in the continuous moving of the clothes by means of a transport chain, so we can select the clothes when they pass certain points. This topic of the dynamic-warehouse shows some shortcomings in relation with the number of clothes stocked and the daily flows of exit and entry, specially when they are great. An object of this invention is to solve the problems that arise in the controlled individual handling of clothes, moving only the ones chosen for the daily flow in a warehouse, workshop or the like.
With regard to the automatic transport of clothes or their components between workstations, there are developed systems including a real time production control, automatic balancing of workstations doing the same operation, etc. These transport system basically have a main circuit where the hangers move, and stations where the hangers that move along the main circuit come into, according to a predetermined logic, and return to the main circuit once the related operation is finished, see DE-A-17 81 310.
Being rather fulfilled, from the point of view of what can be required in a nowadays garment factory, these transport systems have a great dependency upon the characteristics of the factory for their installation, they are not quite flexible with respect to future changes in their configuration, and it does not seem easy their application, in their present state, to future robotized workstations. These reasons, among others, have caused in other branches of the industry the application of autoguided vehicles as a medium of transport between workstations. The application of specific clamps for the clothes and their components, designed taking in mind the operations in the workstations and the compatibility with the apparatus of this invention, help to solve the problems arising in the nowday transport system.
The contribution of technologies nowadays extended, like that of autoguided vehicles--see for example AT-PS 24 5442--which can follow defined paths and stop in established points of such paths, and the communication by radio between a host computer and a set of apparatus. The present invention is the first to provide the tool for the automation of the operations for moving the clothes and the management of the information needed for the operations, such as the time and place of stockage and kind of cloth moved.